


Nothing Like the Sun

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-28
Updated: 2004-07-28
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: "She must be prettier than the last Slayer." Set during the 1996-flashback in "Becoming" part 1.





	

"She must be prettier than the last Slayer," Whistler had said, or something to that effect, and Angel had just let it go. First of all, he didn't actually know what the last one had looked like; he'd done his best, over the past century or so, to stay out of the way of Slayers whenever possible. And secondly, Whistler just didn't get it. 

Not that this Buffy wasn't pretty. She definitely was, and you'd have to have been dead a lot longer than Angel had been to not notice that. But that wasn't the point, no matter what Whistler thought. 

He'd seen her. He'd watched her stake her first vampire, had watched her transform, suddenly, from a carefree little girl into the Chosen One. And then he'd seen her at home, and discovered that she wasn't as carefree as he'd thought. 

He wanted to help. The fight was important--he'd known that all along, he supposed, he just hadn't been able to stir himself enough to make himself do anything about it. But he'd seen her fighting, and he knew that this was what the rest of her short and difficult life was going to be like, and he'd wanted to help. 

And then he'd seen her at home, and heard--he probably wouldn't have even needed vampire senses--her parents fighting, and he'd realized, suddenly, that it wasn't just that he wanted to help. It was that he wanted to help _her_.

She was something special. He wasn't particularly brilliant, or overwhelmingly perceptive, but even he could see that. All Slayers were special, of course; that was sort of the point. But this girl was more than just that. She was so very _alive_ ; he couldn't have missed seeing the strength of her spirit. If he'd been the poetic type--the not-very-good poetic type, at least--he'd have described the force of it as being like the sun. 

Or maybe he wouldn't. He barely remembered the sun; it was something that existed only in vague dreams of a life that felt as though it belonged to someone else. He couldn't picture it clearly; it was pale and remote, something he'd seen in photographs or movies, but no longer had any first-hand knowledge of. 

There was nothing pale or remote about Buffy, and he thought that if he went two hundred years without seeing her again, he'd still remember her every bit as clearly as he did today.

It didn't matter what Whistler thought his motives were. To be honest, he couldn't say for certain what they were, himself. 

All he knew was that there was suddenly a place for him in the world, and it was fighting at her side.


End file.
